STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, on December 14, 2017, announced its acquisition of software-development tools specialist Atollic. Atollic is the supplier of TrueSTUDIO, a professionally-recognized and highly regarded Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the embedded development community focusing on Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers, like ST’s market-leading STM32 family of 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs).

A top supplier of 32-bit MCUs with a powerful hardware and software ecosystem that accelerate and facilitate application development, STMicroelectronics sees the addition of TrueSTUDIO as further strengthening that offering. Created by an established world-class team of dedicated software tools experts, TrueSTUDIO is recognized as a leading open-source Eclipse-based IDE platform and already supports the STM32 family of Cortex-M based MCUs from ST. The acquisition will allow ST to guide the future evolution of the rich and advanced features of TrueSTUDIO with the STM32 ecosystem to a fully integrated software solution.

“The outstanding quality and depth of the STM32 MCU portfolio and its easy-to-use development ecosystem has positioned ST as a leader in embedded systems,” said Michel Buffa, Microcontroller Division General Manager, STMicroelectronics. “That position, and working closely with Atollic for many years as a top Gold Partner, has shown us the professional features and value TrueSTUDIO has delivered to demanding developers and will soon give STM32 developers a major competitive advantage with the availability of the STM32 TrueSTUDIO IDE for free.”

“As a leading software development tools vendor on the global market, I am delighted to see our tool and highly skilled professional team joining STMicroelectronics, a world leader in the 32-bit microcontroller market,” said Lars-Erik Stenkil, Atollic CEO.

ST has acquired Atollic for a cash payment of $7 million, funded with available cash, and a deferred earn-out contingent on certain conditions, which ST currently estimates will be about $1 million.